1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of digital printing on blinds. More particularly, the present method relates to a method for printing a digital image on the slats of horizontal blinds.
2. Description of Related Art
The use of window blinds has long been used to control both the aesthetics and light control for home and commercial window situations. Window blinds of the horizontal type include a plurality of opaque slats that are aligned horizontally with each other and have a device for raising and lowering the slats along with a means for adjusting the angle of each one of the slats by rotation around a horizontal axis of each of the slats. The most common window blinds are slat blinds, which consist of many horizontal slats, usually of metal, wood, or plastic connected together with string in a way that they can be rotated simultaneously to allow light to pass between the slats. The slats can be rotated up to about 170 degrees to hide the light, or pulled up, vertically, so that the entire window is clear. The most common method to connect slats together is to drill holes in each of the slats on opposite sides and run a string through each of the slats. More recently, horizontal blinds with no holes and with the slats resting on string loops have become available wherein the slats are held in place by gravity resting on the bottom of the loop. The slats are not connected to one another in any way. The slats can easily be removed by sliding them horizontally and the blinds can usually be rotated 180 degrees allowing either side of the slats to be viewed while remaining closed.
It has long been known that the interior side of horizontal window blinds can be decorated with colors or images that match or blend in with the decor of the room they are used in. They also have been decorated with messages and the like. The visibility of the image or message is controlled by the angle of the horizontal slats.
The idea of ink jet printing on blinds to produce an image on the blind slats has been explored in U.S. Pat. No. 7,401,556 issued Jul. 22, 2008 to McCarty et al. and having a priority of Jan. 9, 2004 which provides that horizontal blind slats each having a pair of holes are mounted on a fixture assembly that support each slat and are attached to a table which is moved into an inkjet printer (with no fixed bed print table) instead of the regular fixed bed utilized in many large format inject printers. The problem of course is the expense of a separate support fixture for the slats, the need to in most cases attach the slats to the fixture, and the labor to disconnect and reconnect each of the slats onto strings (i.e. restring them) or other normal blind setups makes the method not very commercially attractive. In addition, the standard blinds that are threaded through a hole in each slat are hard to reassemble one at a time and are more adapted to commercial large scale assembly rather than single set reassembly. Accordingly, while the Assignee of this patent, 3 Day Blinds, is still in business, it appears to have never sold such blinds.